When the Caged Bird Screams
by Yxonomei
Summary: [Sasunaru, Gaanaru, AU, Yaoi, disturbing content] The administration of Sekai Academy actively encourages the students to kill each other.


**Warnings:** Slash/Yaoi, very AU, non-descriptive acts of violence, possible non-con, possibly challenging content of a mature nature

**Pairings:** Sasuke/Naruto, Gaara/Naruto

**Rating:** R

**Disclaimer:** Owned by Kishimoto Masashi, et al.

**Summary:** The administration of Sekai Academy actively encourages the students to kill each other.

A/N 1: This fic is intentionally the way it is. However, the author knows that zir readers are incredibly intelligent and more than capable of handling anything zie throws at them. All tense changes are deliberate and denote events preceding the immediate story-moment.

A/N 2: Be forewarned—this is a peculiar child of a peculiar brain. Whether the reader may find anything worthy of approbation, the author cannot say—except that zie hopes the reader will show enough human respect and dignity to refrain from sacrificing zir upon the alter of the reader's indignation. Thank you most kindly for your time and for, if you may be so inclined, a memento of your visit in the form of a review. The author is, as always, the humble and pitiable servant of your entertainment.

* * *

::When the Caged Bird Screams::

* * *

He lights the cigarette—_bluewhite spark flicker redorange flame redred glow_—and the other boy immediately begins to enumerate the many health risks of smoking and second hand inhalation. Routine. The rusted rail beneath his calloused palm sucks in the heat of his hand and leaves behind a bar of cold. He puts a little more weight on it, listens to it moan piteously, and dares the laws of gravity to take him. Only a two story drop from the foot-wide balcony attached to their dorm room. Survivable. 

"Ever think it strange," his companion says into the midnight breeze with lips painted dark red—_whoremouth_—"how the administration not only condones the level of brutality of those duels, but actively encourages it? You get demerits for not killing your opponents. 'S the only reason I'm at the bottom of our class: I won't kill them if I don't have to."

"You're stupid." Deep, bitter drag, killing his lungs slowly, so, so very sweetly. Red waxy lips curl down into a pout; blue eyes—blue like those hotel swimming pools in the glossy ads of travel brochures in all those places he's never seen and never will—narrow and catch the sulfurous gleam of the street lights.

"Shut up, you bastard. At least I try to think—"

"I haven't noticed."

"—beyond myself, beyond this school and its dormitory rivalry and those notes the administration sends us telling us which of our classmates we have to fight to the end," the other boy finishes in a sour rush of air, waving away the cigarette's pungent smoke. "Why do I have to be an Angel in the first place?"

"Because you have to. We all do." Flick.

The cigarette dies beneath the crushing force of his boot-toe.

* * *

The mouth is peach-pink and glistening, open in relaxed invitation. Those blue eyes stare up from the shiny depths of the photo, stare past the photographer, transgressing the boundary of the fourth wall, of time, and stare at him, at Uchiha Sasuke. Those eyes in this picture, taken years ago by someone privy to that unpainted mouth and languorous, esurient look, are his alone. He, the intended viewer from the very beginning, even if the two of them did not even know of each other's existence at the moment of this shot. 

He traces the outlines of that flushed face and the streaks of pearly come held in glistering freshness for the life of the photo. Pale hands of unknown people—_killthem killthem howdarethey?_—remain frozen in mid-caress across the young planes of the boy's body. Four pairs of hands, glowing against his roommate's darker skin.

Come-spattered, sleepy and yet so very, very hungry, this unknown-known face pierces him with a look he has never seen in real life, face-to-face.

He slips the photograph back between the pages of his old calculus II notebook. The taste of concupiscence lingers on the back of his tongue. He throbs with the memory of that naked, vulnerable mouth.

Less than a year after becoming roommates with the other boy, he found that strange, compelling, singularly fascinating photo on the book-and-paper-strewn floor by his roommate's bookcase, the creased edge just sticking out from beneath an old yearbook from the other boy's previous school. Curiosity like nothing he had ever known before hooked into him, and he rescued that glossy secret from the localized disaster area.

Uzumaki Naruto has never mentioned its absence.

_Who has touched you?_

He licks his lips.

* * *

This makes you an Angel, Naruto tells his reflection as he spreads the burnt-rose-blood red color across his bottom lip, carefully filling in that blank space outlined by the berry-dark lip pencil. The first touch of carmine and he can see again, see those strange scars carved into his face before the solidification of memory: that which marks him as cursed-gifted-wanted-needed-necessary… an Angel. 

An Angel is always born from the sacrifice of others. The fire was so red when it devoured his old school. He can still feel the hot, dry lick of flames against his exposed flesh, feel the excruciating agony as the synthetic fibers in his clothes melted against his skin. No air, only smoke and the sweet burning of his classmates as they fell silent in the conflagration.

He still has a copy of the news footage on an old, battered VHS tape; all these different reports, mashed and jumbled incoherently together, recorded on a single cassette. He, the only survivor, the only one to emerge unscathed… an Angel. Clothing melted where it had not burned off entirely, eyes wide and wounded beneath a soot-darkened fringe of hair, features gray and perfect and gone under ash and char—the tissue fine remnants of his peers, his teachers?—he huddled inside the red thermal blanket and stared silently at the news reporters and those violently phallic microphones thrust in his face. The hungry vultures kept getting in the way of the paramedics, firefighters and police officers crowded around him.

_How? How? How?_

_Do you feel?_

Unharmed, but hurting. Pain without corroborating physical evidence.

The colored lips turn up in a smile as his features resolve from the blankness, the gray. Carefully, he rolls the waxy, bitter stick of red all the way down and caps the tube.

"Have you seen my tie?" he asks his roommate, Sasuke, as he buttons up his white shirt before the bathroom mirror. He doesn't tuck it into his school-issue russet slacks just to annoy the teachers.

"No."

And you're not going to help me look for it, Naruto translates. Another typical morning routine that has endured since his late arrival in the second semester of First Forum and his finding out who his roommate was to be, and has continued into the first semester of Fourth Forum. Probably will go on through Seventh Forum, if both of them live that long.

"Are you almost done in there?"

A flash of carmine in his peripheral vision—ruby ear stud—and Sasuke's face interrupts the empty view Naruto's side of the room in the mirror. Naruto stares for a moment at that winking drop of blood-red. "I'm done."

* * *

The civilian students don't know why, but the A-Class students do. The fine vellum envelope waiting inside one's assigned desk, that crisp sheet of paper with the Seikai Academy watermark is the deliberate hand of man pulling the strings of destiny: a fight has been scheduled between two A-Class students, two Angels. You have seven days to find the fellow student whose name defaces the clean whiteness of the small slip of paper. Seven days to battle until one of you can no longer function as an Angel, whether by death or irreparable physical harm. 

Only one envelope shows up in class today; its receiver, a girl from the Kiri dorm, pales beneath her orangey-cherry-pink blush and quietly shoves it into her orange book bag. Naruto wonders if she'll be in class tomorrow, if she'll be alive tomorrow. Some Angels like to start the duel as soon as possible; they are the hunters, the ones who feed on the visceral euphoria of the slaughter. The area of their duel is always bright, bright red afterwards, and Naruto can see their faces so clearly.

Unlike the teacher droning on at the front of the classroom.

Where's Yueh-sensei with her vermillion scarf? He tries to focus, but the features—nose, mouth, eyes—of the substitute teacher hover just beyond the fragile membrane of observation, a blur of faded color, the signification of human without the signifiers. The man's words melt into the continuous electric whine of the fluorescent lights overhead; he dissolves, reforms, dissolves into a wash of bland human shapes: head, body, arms, legs. These are all the parts that come together, usually, to make a person. The teacher is a person, one of many, but that is as much as Naruto's mind will permit him to perceive.

You do not exist, he says in a voice that no one ever seems to hear. He smiles, red lips curving up in a sweet, tender bow, and turns to look out the window. The leaves of the Nipponese maple trees riot across his vision, so vibrant, so vitally existent. These his mind holds, identifies and archives.

A yawn trips off his tongue.

* * *

The A-Class students all turn to look as one, a single fluid motion, a handful of gazes locked upon the windows overlooking South Quad. The civilian students begin to murmur, looking back and forth between the intently staring Angels. 

It starts in the blood, quickening, ripening, molten resonance: a duel. Then moves into the flesh, screams along the nerve endings: a duel. The pulse of a thousand fragile lives gathers beneath their fingertips. Fists clench. Mouths water. They quiver in their seats like hunting dogs restrained by the leash of their master's implacable voice.

A duel.

Humid breathes fill his mouth with the violence of repressed action. It's the call of power. The crawling, squirming need for connection drives him. Bitten nails dig into the cheap ersatz-wood desktop. Out there is red, he can feel it.

The instant between sitting and standing is lost, blown away in the confusion of the overwhelming call outside. He's never been this susceptible, has never craved the internecine intimacy of combat, but now… a deeper urge galvanizes him into action, pushing him through the act before conscious thought can catch up.

Glass shatters, tearing open cloth and flesh. Naruto looks down, down, down, down, five stories of down. He feels the liquid burn in his cheeks as the marks expand, attuned to the spiritual pressure emanating from the embattled figures below. He can see them! He can!

Hair the color of drying blood, pale-pale-pale skin, the strange smudge of brilliant sanguine above the brow—a character? Which one? Love?—the school uniform in A-Class russet—russet blazer and slacks with black embroidery at the cuffs, black tie with the Suna dorm's emblem, white button down shirt, shiny black shoes—yes, he can see that.

_Predator. Competition. Family. Mate._

The sequence passes below the surface of conscious thought, briefly breaking into the light only to sink deeper into the inarticulate, amorphous core of his being, that part of him where the malicious _scratchscratchscratch_ presence dwells, pressing up against him, drawing razor-gleam claws through his unconscious desires.

The other doesn't matter, only this one created by red, born into it. The other is dead, anyways, crushed in a monstrous fist of sand. A part of him notes this with sadness, with human emotion—_why, why, why do we do this?_—the rest narrows down until there is only a single heartbeat, a single scarlet thread of destiny, negotiating the distance between them, Naruto and the boy in red.

Someone calls his name from the classroom, but that person is far too late. The sudden rush of wind steals the voice away, whipping it back behind him as he launches himself from the smashed aperture. About him the air screams at his violent passage, his mad, ineluctable descent. The maple leaves tear past his face, a maelstrom of heatless flame. Down. Down. Down.

Eyes—killing-frost green—snap open: a coldly murderous gaze mad with bloodlust. He sees death in a swath of fulminating sanguine—hot rush of sand in his face.

No, he says. The sand parts before him. Something close to surprise flickers across the other boy's face.

Flesh-bone to flesh-bone. Impact.

* * *

Caramel-brown hands weave a complex tapestry of gestures as the straw-blond boy attempts to explain this morning's act of suicidal insanity—_stupidstupidstupid slap thatlookrightoff yourfucking face_. Sasuke stares at those painted lips as they move to cradle vowels and consonants. Liquid heat slides deep into his belly. A line of sweat breaks upon his forehead. 

A naked, saliva-glisten mouth spread wide open about his implacable cock. Blue-blue eyes glowing with a half-banked fire, nearly hidden beneath the sleepy sweep of white-gold lashes.

He can see himself forcing his roommate down upon one of their narrow twin beds; can feel the sharp angles of those boney shoulders beneath his sweat-nervous palms; can hear the wild pulse of that delicate bird-heart through the flesh and cage of bone beneath him; can taste the metallic saline of sweat upon his own anticipatory lips; can smell their animal, male odor mingling into a singular cologne. He'll rub that color right off, an undressing far more primal, more visceral than anything that can be done with mere articles of clothing.

"He's only in Fourth Forum yet he kills indiscriminately: civilian, angel, his own dorm, other dorms, anyone, even without a fight notification. What were you thinking? We can't interfere in a duel."

"He'd already won," Naruto replies with a negligent shrug. Blue eyes laugh up at him as the other boy lazily swivels about on his desk chair, legs pulled close to his skinny chest. "I can still feel his heart between my thighs." Naruto sucks idly on the tip of his right index finger.

"Idiot."

"Do you think we'll ever duel each other next year when we're in Fifth Forum?" The finger comes away with smudge of slick sanguine. "I don't want to fight any of the upperclassmen in our dorm. I won't kill you, either."

Tangle of limbs—one set dark, the other light— on the ground below; roar of the sand and the rabid wind… Heart in his throat—_beatbeatbeatbeat_—trembling and wild, he watched his roommate lick a wet stripe across that psychopath's tattoo and then arch back to scream in a voice broken upon the rack of excruciating rapture.

"I will."

"No, you won't." Soiled grin—_whoremouth whoremouth_.

He snaps.

Later, Naruto tells him that he doesn't like the taste of cigarettes, as if Sasuke actually cares what that mentally deficient idiot likes.

Sasuke drags his thumb across that cruel mouth, smearing the red.

* * *

Uzumaki Naruto. Fourth Forum. Bottom of the A Class of the Konoha dorm. Eyes blue, gasflame blue, burning, liquid meteor-heart blue. Hair blonde, haloing the face in a corona of white-gold fire. Weight, warm, solid, earthy-ethereal, descending from the sky, ablaze with the afternoon star, shimmering blades of sunlight streaming from his body. 

An Angel.

Connection. Peppermint and _dashi_. Rupturing the abstract concept of warmth. Connection.

Spiritual energy bursting forth, mixing, reacting, fulminating. Ecstasy drags hideous claws through agony. Agony deliciously howls. Powerful and powerless; reduced to nothing, and born again in an enraptured existence.

Uzumaki Naruto. Blood mouth.

He tastes the name upon his tongue.

A fine line of sensation stretches out between, a fine red thread. Connection.

Uzumaki Naruto.

Pulled away by a dark-headed bird, a ravening threat to the connection made in the dripping gold of an afternoon imbrued a sweet, sweet sanguine.

He'll find him again tomorrow. It cackles inside him. Amber eyes flash.

_I'll find him, mother._

Uzumaki Naruto.

A Demon is born through the heady rush of familial blood over trembling hands. Kill that which offends, that which hurts. Like a knife through butter until it hits a rib. Who knew she had a heart until he held it in his slick hand? Now she'll never reject him again. Not a monster. Not a monster.

Love.

Uzumaki Naruto.

* * *

"You're a real bastard, you know that, right?" Naruto says as he swings his book bag back over one shoulder by its short leather handle-strap. Classes start in five minutes, and Angels and civilians rush about them, laughing and tormenting each other with kind friendship. "You could have at least let me clean off afterwards." 

It's no fun discovering that your sheets are glued to your sensitive bits with dried semen. It's quite, quite, quite, quite painful, like, he imagines, waxing or pulling out nose hairs one at a time.

No response from the black haired bastard. Typical.

They pass through the front gates, past the great marble columns that hold up the Sekai Academy crest in an arching tangle of wrought iron vines, and enter North Quad. The stylized, white-stone classroom buildings sit patiently at the end of their respective beige gravel path for the students, who are as likely to cut across the lawn's verdure as to actually stick to the paths. Sasuke always stays on the carefully maintained pathways, and roughly pulls Naruto by the collar of his blazer whenever he tries to step on the soft, springy, oh-so-enticing grass.

Today's yank is particularly rough. Naruto totters for a bit on his heels and then topples backwards into Sasuke's sharp shoulder, which catches him in the nape of his neck. His book bag drops from his hand and, the catch having sprung open, spills out all his papers and books across the gravel pathway. This leads to several heated seconds of imprecations, throughout which Sasuke remains a smug, stoic bastard-face and doesn't even try to help him pick up his stuff.

"Let's see you try to stick your dick in me next time, asshole."

Thank the little gods, though, that he heals fast—otherwise bending down to gather his school supplies would not be possible.

_Holding him down. Hard hands. Sharp teeth. Stop it! Stop it! What the—fuck!_

Stupid, self-centered bastard. Naruto has changed his mind. Definitely, definitely changed it. He wants to fight the jerk when they enter Fifth Forum next school year. Yeah, tear him a new one.

What is thinking? No, he doesn't want to fight Sasuke, not like that. Not for this school. Not when he can't even remember why they have to fight. He knew… once. He knew when those faceless adults approached him after the fire. Something they said—what did they say then?—made him agree to come here, but for what?

He's losing himself with every fight, with every bloodred victory. He just can't… remember… how to be human, how to feel. I am an Angel. I do this for… I do this for…

Red. Red. Red. Bones shattering under his fist. Organs pulping between his fingers.

"Hurry up, moron," Sasuke says with cool impatience. The ruby studs in his ears catch the spring sunlight. Secondhand smoke kills.

"Yeah, yeah." Naruto stuffs his papers and books into the leather bag and reaches for one stray pencil that has decided to roll down the nearly imperceptible incline.

Then he feels it, like a wash of molten blood across his back.

The one dipped in red. The one he will always, always see. The one who also has fire trapped beneath his skin, burning him alive until the world turns to gray ash.

Saliva floods his mouth as his gums tingle in a sudden rush of consuming hunger. The marks on his cheeks sear the flesh beneath as they spread, clawing away at his humanity.

_Predator. Competition. Family. Mate._

The ineluctable sequence of identity pulls his thoughts under.

"Moron, what are you—"

He digs the battered soles of his shoes into the sharp gravel and pushes off. There. There. There. The muscles and tendons pull in his body as he demands more speed, more speed, more speed. The one, the like-creature, stands at the far end of the quad, drenched in the crimson of existence and waiting for him.

Gaara. Yes, that is the name that… who told him that last night? Gaara who kills. Gaara who feels the _scratch-scratching_ presence prowling the inner labyrinths of what might have once been a human. An Angel. No… something else…

Gravel. Gravel. Grass. Grass. Grass. Gravel.

Colors bleed by him, spinning off into the gray, into the static of non-existence.

_Predator. Competition. Family. Mate._

Arms close about him as he pushes his face into a firm chest. Gaara smells like earth and formaldehyde.

* * *

Uzumaki Naruto. 

Mine.

* * *

We know how to makes Angels. We know how to make Demons. 

Now we will make God.

* * *

The End 

This is the consequence of too much surrealism, neo-Gothic postmodernism, French New Wave and Italian neo-realism. Yes, the author has no shame in appropriating other literary/media movements for zir own ends. Ze is bad, very, very bad. Bad author.

Any resemblance this has to anything else (e.g. TV series, manga series, anime series, et cetera) is completely incidental—except, perhaps Marilyn Manson's music videos. The author was going through a MM music vid phase while writing zir grad thesis, which is now done. /cheers/


End file.
